My Third Year of Homeschooling Dynamics (Transitions Blog Series- Part Three)

This is the third post I’ve written, that is a part of my new blog post series entitled “Transitions: Waiting for a Season of Change.” The reason I called it that is because, that is where I am at this point in time of my life. This is the first year in a long time that I didn’t start out with a long list of goals and plans.

In fact, when the year began three weeks ago, it was all up the air where God was going to take me, and what was I going to do next. The only goals I had was to revamp/grow my blogs (asklatisha.com and wordsofapoetriot.com), complete my children’s educational levels (Third-grade and Kindergarten) and transition to the next level, be a good wife, a good mom and home-maker, take care of myself and my kids, help them grow healthy and strong, body, mind and soul, and grow in my relationship with God. Okay, maybe, I still do have a lot of goals. What can I say, I’m a goal oriented person.

Then I have a whole lot of hopes and desires. Like finding a bigger home, because I am finding it very challenging to manage my home life (homeschool-2 children, work-at-home, toddler, and a baby) in the limited space we have. Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for our blessings, but our family could use more room to grow.

So with that being said. Let’s talk about the homeschool dynamics for this third year of homeschool for our family. But before we do that, let’s go back for a moment to where it all started.

I first started to officially homeschool my daughter for First Grade, even though technically I homeschooled in her earlier years too, just not full-time. She went to “school in the building” for two years of Pre-school and then Kindergarten.

I had it on my heart to homeschool for years before, but was kind of afraid to take that step. We talked about it, thought about, prayed about it, researched it, we filled out the necessary paper work, bought the curriculum and then September 2012, we began First Grade.
The curriculum I choose was Alpha Omega Publications LifePac ® First Grade, 5 subjects (Bible, Math, Language Arts, Science, History & Geography). During my first year of homeschool I was pregnant with my third child. He was born at the beginning of summer vacation. At the end of completing my first year of homeschooling, I felt very proud of what we had accomplished and felt very excited to begin my second year of homeschool.

My biggest concerns and questions during that time was how will I keep my three year old occupied while teaching and dealing with pregnancy related sickness, fatigue, etc. It wasn’t easy, but God brought me through and we successfully completed the first year of homeschool.

Our second year of homeschool was a bit more challenging. I was excited to see what our homeschool dynamics was going to be like, as I was no longer pregnant, but still breastfeeding. However, I got pregnant again half way through. So within my second year of homeschool, I also had to muster through pregnancy related nausea, fatigue, etc. Once again, God brought us through and we completed another year.

Truth be told, this third year is the most challenging of all. Dealing with and trying my best to balance a third-grade student, a kindergartener, a troublesome (a curious climber who pulls down everything in his reach) toddler and a breastfeeding newborn baby (now four months).

The baby was born in October, basically at the beginning of the school year, so we’ve had a challenging time getting a consistent daily plan or schedule going. It was tough in the beginning, with those sleepless nights and breastfeeding every two hours, but the sleepless nights passed after about 6-7 weeks and the breastfeeding season passed by his third month.

Things have settled, in terms of newborn baby season, but I still have not been able to get a consistent school schedule going. It has just been a very challenging school year for me.

Not only because of what I’ve mentioned so far, but because my third-grader (my daughter) even though she just turned eight, wants to play all the time and needs a lot of pushing to focus and concentrate on school. That’s one of the reasons I’d like to get a bigger home. So she would have her own space to grow and have a quiet spot away from her playful little brothers to focus on school.

This year for her curriculum I am using Alpha and Omega- Switched-on-Schoolhouse Math, History & Geography, Bible and A Beka Books- Exploring God’s World (Science), Language 3, Art Projects 3, Health, Safety & Manners 3. For Second Grade, I used LifePac® Second Grade Math, Bible, Science, History & Geography, with additional resources like Read and Understand Poetry, Choosing Obedience (Train-Up a Child Publishing) and Kids of Character Bible Study. I bought all my curriculum from christianbook.com.

Today, was a tough homeschool day for me. My mood was terrible and I lost my smile and could not get it back no matter how I tried. These emotions took over most of my day. We ended up not doing school at all because I could not calm my spirit down.

So I hid out for a few hours, while Dad watched the kids and left me alone. He knew I needed that. I watched a movie called “Coffee Shop” (Uptv movie). It was nice, it had a quote in it I want to share with you.

“Don’t lose yourself in the temporary. No one has ever seen, no one has heard and no one has ever imagine what God has prepared.”

This homeschool year has challenged me more than any other, sometimes I felt frustrated, sometimes I’ve felt discourage. But I know that this is only for a season and that God knows the plans He has for my family. God knows how things are going to be for us days, months, years from now. He sees the big picture and all He needs me to do is to not give up. To hang in there. He knows.

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